Star Trek: Voyager - 043 - Acts of Contrition

by Kirsten Beyer

  “Let me guess,” Cambridge said. “Once you reached the First World, your reproductive issues vanished?”

  “Almost overnight,” Cin said. “Our colony ships came to rest here with an eye toward replenishing our supplies and moving on. Some argued, however, that this might be a good place to make our permanent home. Two months later, as the ships were preparing to depart, the Revered Mother, Isandala, gave birth to the first healthy Djinari daughter born in years.”

  “And her Honored Sister, Malamai, followed her example six weeks later, giving birth to a Leodt son,” Dreeg added.

  Cambridge knew that these miracles probably had more to do with clean air and fresh water than a god who had chosen these species to worship it, but he also knew that for the ancestors of Cin and Dreeg, that hadn’t mattered. Pity that it had meant the destruction of dozens of other worlds, once the First World was designated as sacred.

  “So they chose to stay,” Janeway said.

  “Is it really a choice when the truth of divine design is so clear before you?” Cin asked. “The Great River had carried us beyond the reach of our enemies. The journey had made us one people. The First World had been given to us and only here could we survive beyond a single generation. The Source knew better than we did what the people needed. All we have done since honors the Source. Our gratitude to it knows no bounds, and that gratitude has informed our choice to embrace the other worlds connected through the Great River to this secluded area of the First Quadrant. Many of the worlds that now comprise our Confederacy once believed themselves to be alone in the universe. Now they are part of something greater. Now they know the Source and its many gifts. Our ancestors were noble people, but they had fallen into darkness and strife. We have learned from their example. We could never have done all this without the guiding hand of the Source or its infinite wisdom.”

  “And what about the worlds sacrificed so that you could rebuild here?” Cambridge asked.

  “You speak of the lemms,” Cin said.

  “The lemms?” Janeway asked.

  “Our ancestors feared to disrupt the bounty of the First World. As a gift of the Source, preserving it in its natural state was required. Obviously, we have developed an advanced infrastructure here, but we dig only as deep as we must. To harvest the resources of the First World to build all that we required would have destroyed it, and insulted the Source, and that we could never do. We sought out worlds that did not contain other sentient life—what we call the lemms—and sacrificed them to the Source.”

  “With the help of the ancient protectors?” Cambridge asked.

  “They were a gift of the Source. Ancient technology was discovered on a distant planet, far from the First World but near enough the Gateway to make regular access possible. Once activated, that technology gave birth to the ancient protectors. It took decades to determine how many uses they had, as well as their symbiotic relationship to the streams. But as a gift, we knew they were ours to do with as we required. Without them, we could never have built what you see here. Once they began to resist our efforts, we knew the Source had placed a limit on our expansion. We honored the ancients’ compassion for the lemms and left them in peace to tend to their own.”

  Janeway nodded, though Cambridge thought he saw her eyes glistening. That the presider could paint such a pretty picture over wanton destruction was no solace. It was willful denial and its results, no matter how aesthetically pleasing, could never hide that truth. Had the Djinari and Leodt abandoned the lemms and the ancient protectors because they believed it was ordained by their god, or because the protectors had become more of a nuisance than they were worth? The Leodt and Djinari would only ever admit to the first answer. Cambridge suspected the admiral grieved, because she believed that it was the second.

  CIF TWELFTH LAMONT

  “Welcome to the command center, Lieutenant Kim,” General Mattings greeted him from within a waist-high circular bank of control panels.

  “Thank you, sir. It’s an honor to be here,” Kim replied. He had already been briefed on the configuration of the Lamont’s bridge by Chakotay. The general stood at the heart of the center. Every Confederacy Interstellar Fleet’s commanding officer was required to stand while on the bridge, as was every other officer. That rank did not earn one a chair was likely as much a reflection of the value placed on “readiness” by officers of the CIF, as the reality that their reliance on the streams gave them access to much of their territory in a matter of hours.

  The ship had a large viewscreen stationed directly ahead of the central controls. A few meters before it rested a long series of panels where three officers worked, dividing the duties of operations, navigation, and engineering among them. The port side of the bridge held interfaces for two armament, or tactical, officers. The starboard side was manned by two sensor operators.

  Behind the general, six junior officers stood at attention, three on either side of a large door, the command center’s only entrance. Every bridge officer, from Mattings on down, carried a sidearm secured to their belts.

  Uniform color denoted specialty and rank. The general wore white. The forward bridge officers were clad in shades of blue, tactical in red, and sensors in green. The rear guard wore gray. Like everything the Confederacy did, the uniforms were ornate, both in design and insignia. They reminded Kim of some of Tom Paris’s more ancient naval holodeck programs.

  “JP Creak, let’s show our guest where we’re going,” the general ordered, gesturing for Kim to stand beside him, just outside the control ring.

  The lieutenant looked toward the main viewscreen where a relatively crude astrometrics display was rendered. Several long blue lines streaked through it.

  “Are those the streams, General?” Kim asked.

  “Chakotay said you were a quick study,” Mattings noted. “They are, son. They’re but a fraction of the Great River. Those are the significant ones within five thousand light-years of our present course.” After giving Kim a moment to absorb this, the general asked, “Can you identify our destination, Lieutenant?”

  Kim could not read the alien script that dotted the display, but he and Chakotay had already reviewed the flight plan to Lecahn.

  “Sector 361, Grid 19,” Kim said.

  “That’s right,” Mattings said, a little surprised.

  “General,” Kim said, “didn’t you say it would take two days for us to reach Lecahn?”

  “Yes.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but isn’t that a stream running through Sectors 269 to 361?”

  “It is.”

  “Is there some reason our course does not utilize that stream?” Kim asked.

  “We could.” Mattings nodded. “But then we’d arrive at Lecahn in less than five hours. We’re taking the long way. Give us a little time to get to know one another.”

  “I look forward to it, General,” Kim said.

  “As do I,” Mattings said.

  After a long pause, Kim asked, “Was the Twelfth Lamont the first ship to register Demeter’s access of the Gateway?”

  “She was,” Mattings said, nodding. “I came within a monkar’s tail length of destroying her.”

  “But they were accompanied, sir,” Kim said. “I thought the presence of the ancient protectors saved them.”

  “It did,” Mattings said. “But those ancients took the Source’s sweet time identifying them as friendly.”

  “To the Lamont?”

  “To the other protectors inside the stream, who then transmitted their acceptance to the Lamont.”

  “Do you still have records of that encounter?” Kim asked.

  “Creak?”

  A young, wiry Leodt in a dark green jacket replied, “Affirmative, General.”

  “May I see them?” Kim asked.

  “Of course,” Mattings said. “Creak won’t bite,” he added with a chortle, gesturing for Kim to approach the sensor station.

  “General,” a low voice called over Kim’s shoulder as he made his wa
y around the command center’s rear arc, “all data regarding Federation contacts remains restricted.”

  The general looked toward the voice’s source, a stout Leodt wearing scarlet. “You think Lieutenant Kim doesn’t already know his fleet ships inside and out, JC Eleoate?”

  “Our protocols are sure to be new to him,” Eleoate replied.

  Mattings sighed. “If you’re worried that it’ll take Kim here only two days to do our jobs better than we do, I’ll take that bet. But our purpose is to exchange information with our new friends. He hasn’t been here five minutes and you’re already at threat level nine.”

  “I did not mean to suggest—” Eleoate began.

  “Your concern is noted,” Mattings said. “Creak, show Lieutenant Kim whatever he wants to see.”

  “Immediately, General,” Creak replied.

  Kim noted that Eleoate’s eyes remained fixed on him as he reached the sensor station. As a tactical officer, Kim understood Eleoate’s reservations. He could only hope that the vast majority of those serving with Eleoate did not share his fears.

  VOYAGER

  The large display screen of the astrometrics lab looked like a playbook for parrises squares. Captain Chakotay had never seriously studied the game, but a roommate at the Academy had been a champion and spent many a long night poring over the patterns he and his teammates had designed. Several bright stars dotted the screen before him like team members. Running through the display in hues of blue, violet, and red were long lines connecting and dividing the territory or indicating patterns of movement through it.

  “Captain,” Commander B’Elanna Torres greeted him as he approached her position at the main data interface panel that bordered a wide platform separating it from the massive screen.

  “Good morning, Captain,” Lieutenant Nancy Conlon echoed.

  “What have we here?” Chakotay asked.

  “It’s taken a little time,” Torres began, “but Nancy and I finally identified the particular subspace glitch common to the corridors or streams the Confederacy uses.”

  “Glitch?” Chakotay asked.

  “The proper term is ‘subharmonic particulate manifold variance,’ ” Conlon said.

  “ ‘Glitch’ is fine,” Chakotay said, smiling.

  “It also might be more accurate,” Torres added. “The first time one of these corridors was created, no one with a rudimentary grasp of physics or quantum mechanics would have called it anything but a mistake. These streams are not naturally occurring. They are not the byproduct of interstellar travel or weaknesses in the fabric of subspace. The energy necessary to carve out even the most unstable tunnels or corridors through subspace is violent and usually very destructive to local surrounding normal space.”

  “Unstable?” Chakotay asked. “The Confederacy has been making use of them for five hundred years.”

  “And the Vaadwaur were using something similar to them at least three hundred years before that,” Torres said. “When Voyager visited the Indign system and its surrounding sectors, you were also right on top of another system of subspace corridors.”

  “I was still a guest, but I don’t remember anyone mentioning them during the briefings I attended,” Chakotay said.

  “Hawking took the best readings and referred to them as subspace instabilities,” Conlon noted. “They thought they had detected old transwarp tunnels. We had our hands a little full to investigate further, but now that we have data on so many examples of these corridors, it’s easier to find the appropriate correlations. Transwarp leaves unique signatures, just like warp trails. The streams don’t work quite the same way. One of the instabilities Hawking detected was definitely transwarp. But none of the others show the same signature.

  “What’s more interesting,” Voyager’s engineer went on, “is that the Turei told you the corridors they used were unstable. They had devised means to reinforce them, but constant use degrades them quickly. The corridors near the Indign system had obviously fallen out of use, and many were collapsed or on the verge.”

  “The Confederacy seems to have realized early on that the corridors were unstable and uses the wave forms to keep them open,” Torres added.

  “But they rotate individual wave forms constantly throughout their corridors, don’t they?” Chakotay asked.

  “If we’re taking their word for it,” Torres said, nodding. “I’m guessing that they didn’t institute that precaution until the ancient ones turned against them. They no longer seem willing to run the risk of allowing them to grow beyond very limited parameters.”

  “These are all of the corridors present in how many sectors?” Chakotay asked.

  “Ten,” Torres replied. “The deeper we get into Confederacy space, the more we’ll be able to map. I’m adding some new protocols to our long-range sensor sweeps to pick up as many as possible. But look at this,” Torres said, magnifying a small section of the screen.

  “That’s our current route to Lecahn,” Chakotay realized.

  “And there’s a stream running right beside it,” Conlon pointed out.

  “They don’t want to use it,” Chakotay said softly. “Why?”

  Torres shrugged. “Each stream, like the Gateway, has a particular harmonic resonance that pulls it into normal space to allow ingress. Sometimes the resonance range is large enough that any ship moving at high warp could accidentally access it, but most require a key, like the one the proctors gave us for the Gateway. However, once inside, as long as you know what you’re looking for, the resonance is easy to detect.”

  “So if we use them once, we can always use them,” Chakotay said. “The Confederacy probably doesn’t want us to know.”

  “I wouldn’t if I were them,” Torres said, expanding the map again.

  “There’s one more thing you should see,” Conlon said, directing Chakotay’s attention to another area of the grid, where the bright lines denoting corridors were noticeably absent.

  “Is that a border of Confederacy space?” Chakotay asked.

  “No,” Conlon replied. “Long-range sensors are just beginning to render it, but it looks like another small void.”

  “Something they’re hiding from us?” Chakotay mused.

  “Could be,” Torres agreed. “But according to the charts the Confederacy provided of their territory and aligned planets, it is surrounded by several members.”

  “Maybe they haven’t expanded there because there are no corridors present to access it,” Chakotay suggested.

  “But look at the rest of it,” B’Elanna said. “This area around that void is filled with corridors. What happened there?”

  Chakotay agreed it was odd. “Maybe I’ll ask Mattings the next chance I get.” After a moment he asked, “Do we have any idea how these are created?”

  “None,” Torres said.

  “But give us a little more time,” Conlon added, smiling.

  “Good work, you two,” Chakotay said. “B’Elanna?”

  The fleet chief engineer nodded, following Chakotay to the door. Once they were outside, Chakotay asked, “How’s Miral doing?”

  Torres’s face hardened. “She’s fine.”

  “B’Elanna?”

  Finally she looked up at the captain, her sadness plain to see.

  “I’m sorry,” Chakotay said. “I’m not trying to pry. You’ve got plenty to keep you busy. But with Tom gone and Harry studying abroad for a few days, I don’t want to lose touch with the crew.”

  “It’s okay,” Torres said. “She misses her daddy. I do too. Nancy and I are running in circles trying to keep her distracted. So far, it seems to be working.”

  “And the baby?”

  “He’s a busy little guy already,” B’Elanna said, smiling faintly.

  “Are you settled in to your new quarters?”

  “Miral loves them. She’s never had her own room before. Thank you again.”

  “It was nothing.”

  “Tom told me you lied to Admiral Janeway for us,” Torres blu
rted out.

  “It was a reflex,” Chakotay said. “Not one I’m particularly proud of.”

  “I know what that must have cost you,” Torres said. “But your instinct was right. Wild targs couldn’t have dragged me to the Alpha Quadrant for that mediation.”

  “I don’t care what the court decides,” Chakotay said.

  “That makes two of us,” Torres agreed.

  “Tom will make this right. He’ll make his mother understand.”

  “Or he won’t.” Torres shrugged. “Either way, it doesn’t matter.”

  “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

  The Doctor was frustrated. In less than a day he had isolated dozens of viral agents found in the bloodstreams of ten of the first plague victims. In each case, any of the viruses might have caused the systemic damage that ultimately killed them, but none of them showed the telltale catomic tags that would have made the speed with which they attacked and killed their hosts directly attributable to catomic material. And no single virus yet detected possessed other properties that could account for the incredible mutability or effectiveness of his theoretical “catomic virus.”

  The Doctor still had hundreds of samples to process. He would find it eventually. But “eventually” might come too late.

  “Good morning, Doctor,” a familiar voice said, pulling him from his processing.

  “Captain,” the Doctor said, looking up from the screen in his office, a space he did not remember being as small as it actually was. “Please state the nature of the medical emergency.”

  Chakotay laughed. “I really don’t miss that,” he said. “Harry mentioned that Lieutenant Barclay has been here a few times since you transferred.”

  “He was assisting me in upgrading the systems,” the Doctor said.

  “Voyager wasn’t brought up to current specs during the last refit?” Chakotay asked.

  “Current specs for Starfleet, not for me,” the Doctor replied.

  “How goes the battle?”